Waldo Canyon Fire

This June 27, 2012, photo was taken of the Waldo Canyon fire from southwestern Colorado Springs, Colorado, looking northwest towards the areas where the fire started on Saturday, June 23.

NASA satellites continue to provide coverage of the smoke and heat signatures generated from wildfires raging in the western United States.

Image Credit: Don Savage Photography (used by permission)

New Sensor System Tracks Firefighters Where GPS Fails

Portable device locates missing firefighters--saves time and maybe lives

Firefighter Ray Hodgson hits the talk button on his walkie-talkie: "I have fire showing, possibility of a rescue on the third floor. Engine 35, initiate a rescue group. Also back him up with a hose line."

A fire has been set in a three story building at the Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute, where firefighters hone their skills and test equipment. In this case they're testing a device they hope will save firefighters' lives. Everyone taking part in the drill knows how difficult and dangerous it is to locate a missing firefighter in a smoky inferno.

"When you go into a burning building, you don't really see anything. You can't see your hand in front of your face; you're going on instincts. It's almost a surreal experience," says Matt Leonard, a firefighter in the District of Columbia and a deputy chief in Prince George's County, Md.

 "We've had instances where we've lost firefighters in a building and had a hard time finding them. It's very frustrating," says Hodgeson, a firefighter for 44 years. He knows firsthand the sinking feeling of hearing the dreaded words that one of his colleagues is missing. That's why this team of experienced firefighters is taking time to test out a new type of sensor that can track their whereabouts deep inside buildings, where standard GPS units often don't work.

"This has been a need for a long time," says Carol Politi, CEO of TRX Systems, the company developing the sensor. "Sept. 11 was widely publicized and there was not even an understanding of whether certain firefighters were actually in the buildings at the time of that tragedy."

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), electrical engineer Politi and her team at TRX Systems are developing a portable device called the Sentrix Tracking Unit. It straps on like a belt and consists of a suite of sensors. "The sensors include accelerometers and gyroscopes. Those are sensors similar to what you have in your Wii for example--pressure sensors ranging sensors. It allows us to create a picture of what a user has done," says Politi.

"The sensors monitor the movement of the user," explains Ben Funk, vice president of Engineering at TRX. "So when the user moves forward or backwards, left or right, it determines how far a person moved in each direction."

During the fire drill the sensors create a map of the building as the firefighters move through the smoke.

"Twenty-eight-nineteen, we have a mayday on the third floor from the rescue group," Hodgson relays. "Initiate a search."

During the demonstration, Hodgson assumes the role as incident commander as the others move through the burning building in teams of two. One of the firefighters, outfitted with a sensor, crawls through the smoke and purposely gets lost. The Sentrix Tracking Unit maps his location at every twist and turn, sending the data to a nearby base station--in this case, the incident commander's laptop. The system can transmit via a variety of different radio-waves to accommodate different receivers.

"The tracker advises they're on the back Delta Charlie quadrant in the back bedroom," says Hodgson into his walkie-talkie.

In minutes the firefighter is located by a member of his team.

Hodgson relays the good news: "Command to all units on 28-19, I have a confirmation. They have found the victim on the back quadrant and they're coming out with him. We can step down."

"I think this is tremendous for the fire service," says Hodgson. "If my firefighters get in trouble and need help, it's going to cut my time down to about a tenth of what it takes right now to go in there and do a blind search."

In addition to firefighters, Politi says the Sentrix System can benefit other first responders, such as the police, FEMA or the Red Cross, as well as the military and miners.

"First responders, firefighters, they're the most difficult [to track]," explains Funk, "because of the types of motions that they're performing. They're crawling; they're going up and down stairs, forward and backwards."

According to Politi, the system incorporates all signals of opportunity, such as GPS and WiFi. It also incorporates RF signals. "Combining these with inertial and any available, or inferred, map information will allow locations to be tracked even in difficult applications," she explains.

Before making the system broadly available to first responders, Politi says they are delivering the system for training and tracking applications in less adverse environments. "These early adopters are helping to mature the system and ready it for more critical life safety applications," she notes.

The goal is pinpoint precision--to keep a watchful eye through the smoke and flame.

Miles O'Brien, Science Nation Correspondent

Ann Kellan, Science Nation Producer

Where There’s Smoke, There's a Signal

For firefighters, wireless self-powered router “breadcrumbs” that won’t become toast when baked or soggy when hosed

Cellular phones, Global Positioning System (GPS), WiFi, Bluetooth…the list goes on. In today’s modern world, digital signals connect us to friends, family, colleagues and just about anyone else in countless ways. In fact, it’s hard to imagine maintaining these relationships without the aid of digital communications.

Yet, despite the ubiquity of such devices, with few exceptions, today’s firefighters still rely on 20th century radios, whose outdated analog signals have trouble penetrating debris and concrete. When a firefighter heroically plunges into a smoke-filled building, tunnel, or forest, UHF radio or, for that matter, even a GPS satellite signal won’t follow. The firefighters vanish from the map.

That’s why the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is combining two previously developed heatproof and waterproof wireless monitors, with a newly developed technology that working together could lead to a life-saving solution.

One device, the Geospatial Location Accountability and Navigation System for Emergency Responders (GLANSER), crams a microwave radio, a lightweight battery, and a suite of navigation devices into a tracking device the size of a paperback book. Back at the fire truck, GLANSER’s signals are received and transmitted by a small, USB-powered base station plugged into a laptop. As firefighters move from room to room and floor to floor, the laptop animates their every step.

A second device, the Physiological Health Assessment System for Emergency Responders (PHASER), can monitor a firefighter’s body temperature, blood pressure, and pulse, and relay these vitals back to the base station. If a firefighter falls or faints, fellow firefighters can race in, quickly find him, and bring him to safety – guided by GLANSER.

Like the first cordless phones, GLANSER and PHASER transmit at 900 MHz—a frequency that can penetrate walls, given a decent-sized transmitter. But because of their portable size, the transmitters are extremely modest. Their signals could be stopped by a wall, or—in a wildfire—a wall of trees, unless relayed by routers. That presents an infernal challenge.

What’s needed is a self-powered router that can take the heat.

S&T is developing a tiny, one-inch square, ½-inch thick, throwaway router that’s waterproof and heat-resistant up to 500° F. The Wireless Intelligent Sensor Platform for Emergency Responders, or WISPER, contains a two-way digital radio, antenna, and 3-volt lithium cell.

Here’s how it works: Each firefighter enters a burning building with five routers loaded into a belt-mounted waterproof canister. If a firefighter steps behind concrete or beyond radio range, the base station orders his canister to drop a “breadcrumb.” The dropped routers arrange themselves into a network. If a router accidentally gets kicked down a stairwell or firehosed under a couch, the WISPER network will automatically reconfigure.

To an embattled firefighter, a handful of these smart “breadcrumbs” could be the difference between life and death.

To extract the most life from the router’s tiny battery, WISPER’s designers turned to a simple, low-power communications protocol, ZigBee. ZigBee is tortoise-slow by design: trading speed for battery life, telegraphing no more than 100 kilobits per second (kbps) – more than 99 percent slower than WiFi.

“Throw in smoke, firehose mist, stairwells, and walls, and you’re down to maybe 10 kbps. But that’s fast enough to tell an incident commander the whereabouts (via GLANSER) and health (via PHASER) of every firefighter in the blaze,” explains Jalal Mapar, WISPER’s project manager in S&T’s Infrastructure Protection and Disaster Management Division. “We’re not streaming video that needs a lot of bandwidth, just vital signs and coordinates.”

WISPER’s router, dispenser, and tiny USB base station were developed by Oceanit Laboratories, Inc., of Honolulu, and the University of Virginia’s Department of Computer Science under an S&T Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

In March 2011, Oceanit and UVA demonstrated WISPER for S&T at a FEMA office in Arlington, Virginia. Simulating a squad of firefighters, three router-bearing researchers fanned out, dodging around corners, stepping down stairwells. In test after test, their signals stayed strong, even at up to 150 feet.

Now that the SBIR project is proven to be a surefire success, S&T hopes a maker will step forward to produce the routers in volume. Once a commercial entity begins production, S&T’s Test & Evaluation and Standards Office will evaluate a sample product to ensure it meets the stated performance criteria and for consistency. They will also set industry standards so that other manufacturers will have set specifications for design and performance.

“We’ve demonstrated that it works,” says Mapar. “Now we just need a private sector partner to add fuel to the fire.”

New Online Vision 20/20 Fire Prevention Advocacy Toolkit Helps Fire Service Demonstrate the Value of Fire Prevention

Alexandria, VA – June 14, 2011   The Institution of Fire Engineers USA Branch (IFE-USA) is launching a new web-based Vision 20/20 Fire Prevention Advocacy Toolkit that gives local fire departments the tools  they need to prove the value of fire prevention in saving lives and reducing the impact of fire on a community and its economy.  Available at www.strategicfire.org, this program was funded by a DHS Fire Prevention and Safety Grant to IFE-USA to demonstrate the value of investing in fire prevention in these difficult economic times.

The Vision 20/20 Fire Prevention Advocacy Toolkit was developed under one of the five Vision 20/20 strategies, Strategy 1 Fire Prevention Advocacy.  This strategy is led by Alan Perdue, Emergency Services Director Guildford County (NC), a member of the Board of Directors of the International Association of Fire Chiefs and a member of the Vision 20/20 Steering Committee, and supported by Peg Carson of Carson Associates, Inc.

“In this economy, community officials and fire chiefs are confronted with tough decisions when it comes to what services to save and what services to cut,” said Perdue.  “We all know that fire prevention saves lives and money, but it’s been somewhat difficult to justify these programs economically.  Every day, a fire department responds to a fire every 23 seconds, someone is injured every 31 minutes, and every three hours someone dies.  Annually, across the nation, fires cause $15.5 billion in property damage and these new tools can demonstrate the terrible impact that a fire can have at a local level on people, a community and its economy.  A catastrophic fire can not only cause injuries and deaths, but it may also mean that businesses close their doors, resulting in losing both jobs and tax revenue.  It’s really quite simple - prevention pays.”

Included in this toolkit, among others, are resources such as…

•         Fire prevention advocacy strategies

•         Community investment in fire prevention

•         Implementing an advocacy program

•         Working with the local media

•         Evaluating your program’s impact

•         Reaching audiences

“There has never been something like this that local fire chiefs can use to prove the value of fire prevention programs,” said Vision 20/20 Project Manager Jim Crawford.  “The Vision 20/20 Fire Prevention Advocacy Toolkit gives them the information that they can use in reaching out to community leaders, city officials and other decision makers to prove the impact that fire prevention programs have in not only saving lives but making communities economically sound and viable.”

The Vision 20/20 Fire Prevention Advocacy Toolkit can be found at www.StrategicFire.org.  You can also learn more by following us on Twitter @strategicfire and Facebook at Facebook.com/strategicfire.